


A Paper Rose

by Mybaloney



Series: Maine Universe [2]
Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 05:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16402001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mybaloney/pseuds/Mybaloney
Summary: The second story in the Maine Universe AU. They've moved. There's some hefty exposition and contextual scene setting, and then there's a lot of emotionally Working Things Out Like Real Adults.





	A Paper Rose

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be posting this one chapter by chapter. Hopefully that'll work.

Snuffles was a brand new feature in Ed’s life. Snuffles was a stray cat that had walked into the house on the President’s Rockland property one day, made off with a whole half of Ed’s pastrami sandwich, and then just never left.

 

She wasn’t called Snuffles initially. Initially she was just “the cat”. Ed thought she might have been living in the barn. Maybe she’d once even lived at the house, because she walked around inside the house with a sense of ownership that implied she knew it. Then again, Ed thought, cats in his experience pretty much always did that. He didn’t have a lot of experience with cats, but it was enough to know that.

 

He hadn’t had a lot to do between depositions and everything else, so he’d made some flyers and had put them up on telephone poles and at the convenience store and in town. He’d asked around in town too, partly as a way of calibrating how and how much he could walk around doing things with a detail trailing him. Nobody came up to him particularly. People were polite, almost pointedly so. He got the feeling that not being impressed by somebody from the news was a matter of pride for Maine people. That suited him.

 

So he’d done all that, but no-one had claimed the cat. In that time she had gratefully inhaled a lot more pastrami, and had rewarded Ed with a kind of affection Ed found hard to pass up. It was a prickly, startled affection where she obviously wanted to be petted but didn’t want Ed to point that out.

 

He took her to the animal hospital. She was not spayed and the vet said probably hadn’t had any shots. Because of that, Ed guessed that even if she had lived in the house, it hadn’t been for long and she hadn’t been well cared for. He felt bad for her. He let the vet fix her up and then he brought her home. Or, more correctly, he took her back to the President’s Rockland property.

 

When he had come in with the cat in his arms that day, the President had asked then if he meant to keep her. Ed had asked if he could. The President gave him a look that was hard to read. “You don’t need to ask my permission,” he said. “You live here.”

 

Ed didn’t argue with that, but he didn’t confirm it. “Is it going to be okay on your drugs?”

“It’s fine,” the President said. “I’ll wash my hands.”

“You should do that anyway,” Ed said. He was joking but he was also holding his breath for some reason. He didn’t know why it meant so much to be allowed to keep the cat.

 

The President did not like pets. He made that very clear. Having grown up on a farm he considered the idea of a pet useless. He conceded that a cat could be a mouser, but that didn’t mean it needed to live in the house. “It’s an unreasonable measure of affection to place upon an animal,” he said. “They can’t respond to it. Not really. That you imagine she does is all projection.”

“But I can keep her?”

“If you like. If you’re that won over by any hairy thing that nuzzles you.”

 

“You’re not that hairy,” Ed said. But he appreciated the spirit in which the joke was made. And from then on President had called her _Snuffles_ as an additional joke, seemingly a joke about how stupid it was to own a cat. So far they hadn’t been able to think of anything else to call her. Ed had started to hope they didn’t. Hearing the President call her by that name in his drawling orator’s voice was too funny.

 

Like right now, for instance. “Snuffles,” the President said, over the phone, “is under the sink. She’s been under there for two hours and I can’t get her out.”

 

The President was still in Maine. Ed, in DC, was doing his shirt up in the mirror, with his phone between his shoulder and his ear. “What? Why?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“You asked her?”

“Of course I asked.”

“I’m just trying to picture the scene,” Ed said. “You mean you directly asked the cat what she was doing?”

“You make it sound like you don’t talk to the cat all the time.”

“Yeah, but it’s cute when you do it.”

“Well anyway,” the President said, in the kind of voice where Ed couldn’t figure out if being called cute pleased or annoyed him, “she didn’t answer and she’s still there. I think she misses you.”

 

“Send me a photo?” Ed said.

“I will. Will you send me one too?”

“Of what?”

“Use your imagination.”

 

Ed snorted. He took his phone out from his shoulder and snapped a picture of himself in the mirror and sent it off, then put his phone back to his ear.

 

After a couple of seconds, the President grunted. “ _Clothes_.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no. You look nice.”

“Thanks.”

“That tiny little bathroom doesn’t.”

“It’s fine. Send me a picture of the cat.”

 

There was a pause and a click, and then the President said, “I’m still not sure why you couldn’t just stay at a decent hotel.”

 

“Because I have an apartment,” Ed said. “Because I specifically kept it so I could use it while I was down here.”

“Yes, but the water pressure.”

“It’s not that bad. And it’s stupid to pay for hotels every night when I can just have my apartment. It helps us if we’re not stupid about money. Public opinion.”

“I don’t care about public opinion.”

“Yeah, but your divorce lawyers do.”

 

Ed knew the President would have to concede that point. He also knew he hated to concede anything. It was funny how easy it was to picture him reacting to that. He knew the President would be puffing up his chest, drawing his shoulders back, getting ready to Announce. “There’s nothing in it!” he said. “Do you even have bedding?”

“Frank,” Ed said. “Yes. Relax. Send me the picture.”

 

“I’m entirely relaxed,” the President said. “There’s nothing unrelaxed about this objection, _Edward_. I just don’t like you coming home alone to this barren apartment and eating a bowl of cold cereal over the sink…”

“I’m not doing that. Is that what you’re doing?”

“… when you should be doing something that’s actually restorative.”

 

Ed rolled his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to unpack any toiletries, so he rooted around in his cabin bag. “Hey,” he said. “Listen. We had this conversation already. Take a chill pill, dummy.”

“ _Excuse me_?” the President said. “I’m sorry, have we travelled back in time to when that phrase was current? Is this Frank and Ed’s Excellent Adventure?”

 

Ed laughed. After a second, the President laughed too. Ed couldn’t tell if he was laughing with Ed or at his own joke, but it was probably his own joke. Ed could hear him being proud of that even as he’d said it, he was just taking this opportunity to let it out. Ed let him calm down while he worked product into his hair.

 

“It’s a good suit though,” the President said, when he’d recovered. “Aren’t you glad we got it?”

“Yeah,” Ed said.

“What do you suppose she wants?”

“Snuffles?”

“No,” the President said. “Not Snuffles.”

“Oh. Well. I think she just wants to have dinner.”

“Hmpf,” the President said. “I doubt it.”

 

The other ‘she’ was Madame President, former first lady, former VP, Claire Underwood. The President still wouldn’t say her name if he could help it, but Ed didn’t point that out. He knew it must sting that he, Ed, was here in DC being invited to the White House while he, the President, was alone in Maine with a cat. He didn’t want to add to it.

 

Besides, Ed was under no illusion that his being invited to the White House wasn’t for show. Madame President’s strategists were, Ed understood, leaning pretty hard on the gay narrative. They needed him to play a part in it.

 

The story was this: her husband had reacted over-zealously and inappropriately to a legitimate homeland security threat, and also he was gay. If he was gay – strictly and exclusively gay, no nuance – then as far as the public understood there was no stopping their separation. It wasn’t cheating, and also, according to the public, she wasn’t the sort of person who just let cheating go on. Not in the bedroom, and not in the government either. She was sympathetic to real needs, but she didn’t stand for fucking around.

 

That was important, that she wouldn’t allow cheating. It meant the country could almost swallow the President’s pardon. Ed understood it would have been better for her if she hadn’t given him one, but she’d done it, probably because somewhere down deep she still loved him. She probably always would too. Ed was sure of that, even if the President wasn’t.

 

The other thing he was sure of, him along with the rest of America, was that Madame President had managed to emerge from all of this as calm, competent, and almost completely above reproach (not counting the usual detractors). That was awe-inspiring, actually. It had the feeling of myth to it, like Athena being born from the head of Zeus or the phoenix from ashes, something like that. And her poise in it seemed hewn, specifically hewn, and in a way that made him picture it as her emerging sculpturally perfect from a larger mess that had been chipped away.

 

Ed didn’t like giving interviews. He didn’t like being looked at or answering questions about his personal life or his family or childhood. But if it helped her out, Madame President, then under the circumstances he was okay with it. If it looked good to show the public a cordial relationship with her separated husband’s live-in lover, fine. She’d managed to narrate her own difficult personal circumstances into sage political guidance for the nation, and if she could manage that, that wire walk over ‘cold bitch’ and ‘hormonal lightweight’ and in her Louboutins no less, Ed wasn’t going to do anything to make her stumble.

 

Besides, he wasn’t stupid. He knew what the stakes were. He knew what agreeing to this allowed him to have.

 

He knew that wasn’t the only reason she’d asked to see him either. If it was, she’d have chosen to invite him somewhere public and not to the residence. And she wouldn’t have picked him up in the car. She smiled when he got in. She took his hands and kissed his cheeks, and she smelled and looked every inch as perfect as she always had.

 

You could never tell how much of Madame President was intention and how much was impulse because she moved like glass – seemingly delicate, but absolutely rigid, refracting everything around her as she went. But that was the point, Ed thought. That was what was perfect about her, that you didn’t know how she operated, because you couldn’t see the pieces in the whole. Ed was struck by how much he wanted to curl up against her and have her hug him, just from the look of her and the softness of her hands. It was a weird impulse. It was a strange kind of love. He wondered if he’d always feel it. Probably.

 

“Edward,” she said, sounding pleased to say his name, “we won’t have long by ourselves. If you have to tell me something devastating, you’ll have to do it quickly.”

“Devastating, ma’am?” Ed said.

 

She smiled again. Ed felt woozy. “It’s a joke,” she said. “I’m sure if there’s anything to know, I’d know it by now.”

“Right,” Ed said.

 

“You look nice,” she said. “Handsome. That’s a lovely suit.”

 

Ed remembered the President putting it on him. Pressing him against the wall of the fitting room to do the button, working right along the edge of whether he was dressing him or just feeling him up. It was a hot, embarrassed thought and he shoved it down. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

 

“Your hair’s gotten long,” she said. “You’re relaxing into civilian life.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you working in Maine?”

“Not yet. I’ve been looking but it’s been… I’ve been pretty busy with… other things.”

“Of course. Well, I do want to know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“No, ma’am, nothing needed.”

“Oh, Edward,” Madame President said, “I’ve missed you.”

 

Ed snorted. He ducked his head. He thought he might be blushing a little. He couldn’t figure out what there was to miss about him, especially in what he’d just said, but she was still holding his hands and she gave them a little squeeze before letting go.

 

“I don’t want to talk too much about Francis,” Madame President said. “I won’t presume on your relationship or ask for details about it. Your privacy suffers enough invasion as it is.”

“You haven’t been. And I don’t mind.”

“He’ll think we’re talking about him.”

“He does, yeah.”

“Would he be more upset if we do, or if we don’t?”

 

Ed laughed. “No idea.”

“Is he alright?”

“Yes,” Ed said.

“Are you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Would you tell me if you weren’t?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

She seemed to take that in. Then she leaned over until her mouth was right next to his ear. “I know that isn’t true,” she said. Whispered. Ed shivered, all the way up from his guts. It took a lot to keep cool.

 

“Maybe not,” he said. “But even if it’s not, it is. I know how to keep quiet.”

 

That satisfied her. She sat back in her seat. But she picked up his hand again. She held it for the rest of the ride.

 

She wasn’t a hairy thing. Not at all. But she was the most catlike person Ed knew. And in her way, Ed thought, she did nuzzle him.


End file.
